From a new novel I'm messing with

It was May, and the slaughter along I-90 was in high swing.  Raccoons mostly, their black and gray fur emptied of flesh and bone during the nocturnal hours as if the night itself had snatched them and obliterated them in some frenzied sacrifice, their carcasses reduced to shredded meat for magpie and raven.  An occasional deer clipped by the front chrome of a passing truck and sent spinning and jerking to the side of the highway, or ground down by eighteen wheels until nothing much was left but a red smear.  Deputy Taylor was used to these things.  It was common carnage.  A season unto itself that held no surprises except for the lone moose that he was looking at in the center of the road just east of DeBorgia. He had never seen one outside of hunting in Alaska.  It wasn’t that moose didn’t exist in that part of Montana, it was just that they didn’t tend to gravitate toward the highway and its grinding and churning wheels of commerce. 

It was a big male, close to 800 pounds. Not quite full grown by the look of the rack that sat skewed and broken on its massive head as the crown of some violently deposed king, but a big male nonetheless.  Its neck had snapped and its head was askew and its tongue out and stiff in a frozen loll. The left back leg was twisted so tight that the red meat had burst out of the hide.  Taylor wiped his brow and hoped that the winch on the front of the Ford Explorer was going to cooperate or he’d be there more than half the day hacking it down into manageable pieces and then hauling them to the shoulder.

He set about igniting road flares and making some room for himself along the interstate and then repositioned the Explorer and pulled the steel cable wound up in the winch and hooked it round the moose’s neck and front legs, and hoped that the animal wouldn’t suddenly split wide open and roll its entrails out like a thick jumbled carpet all over the road.  The radio came on as soon as he hit the switch for the winch, and it startled him.  “Jesus Lorraine, why you gotta do that?” Taylor said.

“Do what?” said Lorraine.

Taylor watched the moose slowly slide out of the middle of the road and toward the Explorer, its legs up by its head and its head bouncing up and down slightly, tongue out, like it was amused with itself.  “Never you mind.”

“Gotta report about a stolen Ford F-150, black.  2007.  Outta Wallace, Idaho and headin’ our way.  You copy that?”

Taylor looked out at the interstate.  Nothing was coming westbound.  “I copy.  I don’t see anything, over.”

“Consider them armed and dangerous.  It’s a kidnapping, too.  Took some salesperson.”

Taylor laughed.  “Well, it’s about time.  They take so many themselves.”

Lorraine chuckled on the other end.  “I’ll go with that.  Keep your eyes out and stay safe, Taylor.”

“Don’t I always?”

“No.”

Taylor looked up at the sky.  The sun was moving along, blocked here and there by crumpled stretches of clouds that were spreading out like sheets.  “So when are we going out for dinner?”

Lorraine let out a gasp at the other end.  “Taylor, that’s not very professional of you.”

Taylor laughed. “Yeah.  I know. But still.  When?”

“It’s not good practice.”

“It is for me.”

“It’s against policy.”

“No one has to know.”

“It’s against my policy as well.”

Taylor smiled out toward the world.  “Well then, ‘spose I’ll just settle for coffee and donuts.”

“Don’t be an ass.  Watch yourself out there.” 

“I will,” Taylor said just as he felt a thump against the Explorer, and heard the winch making a horrible grinding noise. He hit the switch for the winch and got out and walked around front and saw the front legs of the moose, from the hooves up to the first joint in the leg, partially wound up in the steel cable.  Its head dangled above the ground, and with its tongue out, it looked like every drunk he’d ever driven to the jailhouse or to home. “Aw, Jesus for fuckin’ Christ.”  

He returned to the cab of the Explorer and tried the winch, but it did not come on.  He flipped it several times to be certain and then he cursed again, and again, and then went to the back of the Explorer and pulled out a pair of bolt cutters.

Looking down at the way the front parts of the legs were intertwined with the steel cable, Taylor wasn’t sure where to cut.  He looked at where the hook was, and decided to start there.  The bolt cutters severed the cable like a Bowie going through a piece of licorice, and the hook hit the pavement with a light metal sound.  The moose did not move.  From the look of it, he was certain that all the cable would have to go.  Certain, to a point, because when he checked the westbound traffic lanes again, he saw a black Ford truck, new enough to be the one that Lorraine had talked about, flashing feloniously in the noon sun.  “Shit.”  He looked at the front legs of the moose where they met with the cable, and snipped through the flesh and crunched through the bone until the moose flopped to the roadside, its front hooves still wrapped in the cable of the winch and dripping with gore.

He punched the gas and rumbled over the median, dirt and rocks flying out from behind him as the tires dug into the soft earth.  He bounced out onto the interstate and hit his lights and siren and floored the vehicle.  He came up close behind the truck and saw that there were only dealer plates attached to it, and his innards went cold as the training kicked in, his mind focused on the idea of a gun aboard.

“What seems to be the problem, officer?” the boy said.  His dirty blond hair was blown all about his head.  A few red dots speckled his face.

Taylor didn’t say anything. He peeked into the open window and saw a girl duck down behind the passenger seat, and he stepped back and pulled out his .44 and aimed it at the boy’s head.  The boy glanced at the black hole of the barrel and then stared straight ahead as his knuckles went white over the steering wheel.  He tried to say something, but his teeth chattered apart the words and nothing came out of his mouth but nervous air.  “How many people in the vehicle?” Taylor said.

The boy kept chattering.  And then he said, “Two.”

“You sure?”

The boy nodded.

Taylor kept peering from behind the black body of the .44 trying to gauge the threat.  “You, in the back, I want you to step out of the vehicle, hands up.  Do you understand?” 

There was no sound save for the boy’s quick and rabbit breaths mingled with the chattering of his teeth.  And then Taylor heard the door open.  He looked down the length of the barrel and saw the girl standing outside of the truck, her small hands stretched out in the air.  “Good,” said Taylor.  “Now I want you to walk backwards toward me.” 

The engine to the Ford was still running, and Taylor kicked himself inside.  The boy could take off right now. Just head out.  He watched the girl walking slowly backwards past the tailgate, and then he turned to the boy.  “I want you to slowly turn off the vehicle and drop the keys out the window.”

“You what?” the boy said.

Taylor turned the gun on him, and repeated what he had said to the boy, word for word, and once the keys were out of the Ford and sparkling in the sun on the side of the road, he had the girl kneel down on the shoulder, her fingers interlocked behind her head.  He then turned toward the boy. “Get out.”  He held the gun up and watched the boy carefully open the door and slip out of the Ford as if the whole thing was made up of nitroglycerin and was about to blow at the tiniest movement.  “Do the same thing she’s doin’.”

He watched the boy get down on his knees and wrap his hands behind his head.  The boy looked at the winch and the cable, and the front ends of the moose’s legs jammed in it, marrow sliding down the front bumper like red melted butter. 

Taylor glanced in the cab of the truck and saw the blood spattered on the door and the seat.  It was still wet, and the smudges of it along the dash and glove compartment door glistened.  He went over to the boy and pulled out some handcuffs and placed them on him, and did the same to the girl as the traffic rushed by on its way east.  The girl went limp when he grabbed her by the arm to guide her to the back of the Explorer, and he yanked on her hard, like she was some dog that didn’t want to go anywhere, and she let out a whine.  The boy looked over at her and said something that Taylor didn’t hear, and she stiffened a bit and stood up and went to the back of the Explorer without anymore complaint.  When it came time for the boy, he complied without a single whiff of trouble.  “There a gun in the truck?” Taylor asked the boy as he secured him in the backseat. 

“Yes sir.  On the floor.”

“He dead?”

The boy looked over at the girl, then out the window at the cottonwoods lining the Clark Fork River.  “I don’t know.”

Taylor nodded.  “Sure.”  He opened the front door and grabbed the radio.  “This is Taylor, over.”

The radio spat and fizzed, and then Lorraine came on and said, “Go ahead, Taylor.”

“That truck you talked about, remember, over?”

“Yes.  You seen it, over?”

“I got it, over.”

There was a brief, elongated silence.  “You got it?  You mean, you seen it?”

“Nope.  I got two kids in custody and the Ford with blood all over in it, over.”

There was a longer silence, and then Lorraine came back on and said, “Blood?  You said blood? Over?”

“I did, over.”

“Hold on Taylor.” 

Taylor looked over at the girl.  She was shivering and he knew she was about to fall apart under all her clothes.  “She all right?”

The boy looked over at her and touched her, and she let out a painful sound, not quite a cry, but more muffled and low, a lost, condemned animal sound.  “I don’t think she is,” the boy said.

Taylor dropped the radio and went to the back of the Explorer and popped the window up and pulled out a grey wool blanket.  He opened the door nearest the boy and gave it to him.  “Here.  Wrap her up.  She might be in shock.”

The boy complied and draped the blanket over the girl, and she burrowed into it, the low, painful sound quieted by the dense weave.  “She gonna be all right?  I mean, I never saw her like this before.”  The boy seemed very lucid and alert.

Taylor looked over at the wool blanket.  “Keep her warm and breathing.”

The radio crackled back to life and Lorraine said, “We got all hell coming out everywhere over this one Taylor.  News crews.  The whole mess.”

“Over,” Taylor said.

“Funny,” Lorraine said.  “Over.”

“So what should I do? Where do I take them?”

The radio shushed and whizzed, and then Lorraine said, “Well, if they’re minors, you know, we gotta protect that.  But, first, where’s the salesman?”

Taylor looked over at the boy.  The boy said, “Back there, near that Saltese place.  I can show you.”

“The boy knows.  He can show me, over.”

“He alive?” said Lorraine.

“Don’t know, over.”

“Just mark it, you know, if not, call it in.  We’ll get a helicopter or somethin’ out there.  And then bring them back here.  Idaho State Police will be here soon to take care of it, over.”

“Copy that.  Over and out,” Taylor said.  He looked up at the sky and it was smeared with clouds and the sun was dim and its light drizzled down like weak rain.

He walked over to the F-150 and bent down to pick up the keys, and as he was down, he listened to the sounds of the Clark Fork and thought about getting his tackle and going fishing.  He hadn’t done it since his father passed two years back, and he was going to need some down time when all this had finally come to its end. He secured the F-150 and pocketed the keys and then got into the Explorer and wheeled it over the median and back onto I-90, westbound toward Saltese, his mind locked into duty, his heart casting line.